Clovis residents must wait on decision to allow backyard chickens, as council delays vote
Clovis will wait one year before it officially votes on allowing backyard chickens after the topic resurfaced this summer.
At their Monday night meeting, the Clovis City Council voted unanimously to revisit a proposed ordinance next year once the city can address other issues it faces.
The one-year period will also give the city time to better evaluate backyard chickens and develop a strong ordinance.
Last month the council appeared mostly in favor of the chickens, but Monday’s debate hinged mainly on how the ordinance would be enforced and whether residents could be trusted to self-govern.
The council did not want to add any further stress on the police department or the two animal services officers and city staff with things like permits and citations.
Before the council debate, 49 people had written in to oppose an ordinance, and 14 wrote in to support the idea.
According to Clovis Police Services Manager George Rodriguez, the city of Clovis annually records about 1,200 citations related to animals. Last year, animal services received 5,397 calls. Of those, 72% were about dogs, and 17% were for cats.
The city has also had issues with escaped pot-bellied pigs. But they don’t represent a large portion of calls.
Although the city doesn’t formally recognize chickens as household pets, the council appeared to acknowledge that there are already chickens in the city. Some service calls have been for chickens.
The council signaled that a future ordinance could include a maximum of three chickens and a requirement that owners use metal containers to hold them.
On Monday, Councilmember Bob Whalen introduced the idea of a “good neighbor policy” where residents would have a say in whether their neighbors could have chickens. But that raised questions from other councilmembers, who wondered how it would operate and if that would lead to neighbor conflict or calls to 911 if neighbors did not agree on the chickens.
But Whalen said creating an ordinance that includes a recommendation for neighbors to know about each other’s pets would help the community.
“I think it’s time for our neighbors to have conversations about their pets,” he said.
Despite the chicken debate lasting more than an hour, councilwoman Lynne Ashbeck, who has opposed the idea from the start, told the council the city’s priorities should be on other issues, not chickens.
“If you were a martian listening, you would think we are 100% tone-deaf. We are in the middle of a pandemic, 300 people, or whatever the number, died in California today. Our staff is lean. We’re trying to keep our jobs. We have 11% unemployment — and we are talking about chickens,” Ashbeck said. “To have a conversation about chickens is trivial.”
